ASFS B8888 Open Beta Available

A new open beta update is available for those who wish to participate. This is not an official release and should be used at your own risk, with bugs and issues to be expected in non-official versions.

You can download the update from the downloads page.

Changelog


Update 050224 – B8888 (1.0.8888.33873)

  • Re-designed turbulence and air effects injection method for more compatibility, solving low or no turbulence for some users
  • Added increased maximum turbulence effect capability using Turbulence effect scale slider (settings over 50 now exponentially increase effect strength)
  • Added new option: Add additional clouds for CAVOK/NSC/NCD/Unspecified – Adds clouds over 5000ft, when appropriate, regardless of METAR cloud layers specified – useful in regions where clouds are only specified up to 5000ft – Default ON
  • Added new option: Clone dep/dest weather – Clones dep/dest/alt weather to the vicinity of those areas, preventing unexpected weather updates during departure and approach phases – default ON
  • Added optional checkboxes (checked by default) during ASFS install regarding adding desktop ASFS and Web Companion icons
  • Added new automatic hiding of the ASFS toolbar item in the toolbar settings UI menu, to prevent disabling accidentally (which would prevent weather depiction by ASFS) – If this toolbar item for ASFS is already disabled, however, it will need to be re-enabled by the user to see ASFS weather depiction
  • Added new option/feature: Force low humidity in high visibility conditions – Enable this to have humidity set low in MSFS when visibility conditions are 10+ to prevent any atmospheric obscuration regardless of calculated humidity levels in weather conditions
  • Added missing documentation regarding SimBrief user id and Automatically load SimBrief plans options, and added note regarding need for numeric ID when using SimBrief plans in the Flight Plan section
  • Prevented ActiveSkyUtils.exe from starting more than once
  • Adjusted wake turbulence effective strength for new air effects and preventing too high effects causing excessive rotational effects and control issues in some cases
  • Adjusted PWS Wind Shear alert audio to only trigger when aircraft is in motion (> 30 knots ground speed) to avoid unwanted alerts when aircraft is parked/taxiing
  • Adjusted fog layer generation for better results from 5SM and under visibility (with more obscuration when appropriate)
  • Adjusted visibility/humidity calculations for better balanced results per feedback
  • Adjusted visibility graduation (clearing as you climb) for better balanced results per feedback
  • Adjusted scattering for lower-coverage non-CB cloud layers when precipitation exists for more regional coverage and more expected precip conditions in the entire region as specified
  • Reduced cumulus and cumulonimbus max thickness approximately 10% for better performance in most cases
  • Changed Prevent thunderstorms with CB option to default to OFF instead of ON (this provides more thunderstorm conditions depictions by default)
  • Changed default Periodic theme reload interval to 7 minutes (was 15) per user feedback – Higher interval settings can cause delays in updates that can lead to unexpected transitions in some cases
  • Removed active runway mentions in conditions/popup screens (currently disabled, runway information is planned for future)
  • Fixed issue with fog layer generation where existing METAR layers specified 1000ft AGL and under could conflict with the fog layer generation/scene – Now such layers are omitted and replaced with fog layer generated layer entirely for more expected results
  • Fixed issue where some Navigraph data airports were not added to the ASFS airport database properly (those without approaches, mainly), resulting in missing/old airports or lack of ability to use flight planner for some airport ids
  • Fixed issue where maximizing on the map screen would result in stretched aspect ratio
  • Fixed issue where MSFSOptions.cfg was shown in user preset list (Settings screen), and if selected, would cause crash. This item is now properly hidden from view.
  • Fixed issue where additional clouds outside of METAR may show as “clear” and not “party cloudy” or “cloudy” as expected, for example, when there is broken/ovc high cirrus or other CAVOK-type clouds
  • Fixed issue where entering a non-lowercase or mixed-case email address during login might result in login failure
  • Attempted fix for issue where a network/internet issue during a download process might cause a program crash instead of proper error/retry/failure
  • Updated default included Navigraph data to AIRAC 2303 Cycle
  • Updated documentation and readme